Observations on the Problematic Potential of Russian Oil and the Complexities of Siberia

An economic geographer and noted American observer of the Russian oil industry since the early 1970s examines the mid-term (15 to 20 years) sustainability of the current surge in oil production, particularly in light of the many complexities affecting the existing and potential petroleum resources of Siberia. Analysis and discussion cover the role of vertically integrated companies, the impact of geological and geographical constraints, the reserve pyramid, and significant aspects of the institutional and political environment, such as ownership, taxation, access to pipelines, export routes, and the role of foreign capital. Distinguishing West Siberia from the oil frontier of East Siberia and the Far East, the author argues that the present boom is not sustainable. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: L71, O13, O18. 1 figure, 2 tables, 83 references.     

THE BAYKAL-AMUR MAINLINE A MAJOR NATIONAL CONSTRUCTION PROJECT

A Soviet planning official discusses planning for the BAM project, a major new railroad to be completed by 1982 in East Siberia and the Soviet Far East. The construction of a well equipped rail line, supplied with specially designed tank-cars unit trains, was found to be more economical than the construction of an ordinary railroad, needed for resource development north of the present Trans-Siberian, and of a separate oil pipeline from West Siberia's oil fields across Siberia to Far Eastern refineries and tanker export terminals. Under the decision taken by the Soviet planning authorities, crude oil will move by pipeline from the West Siberian fields to Tayshet, where it will be trans-shipped to tank-car trains taking the oil to Urgal. There it will be transferred again to pipelines for transmission to refineries and port terminals. [See also Soviet Geography, November 1974, pp. 587–590; map, p. 588.]     

Developments in Russian Gas Production Since 1998: Russia's Evolving Gas Supply Strategy

An American geographer and prominent authority on the oil and natural gas industries and resources of Russia and other former republics of the Soviet Union reports on overall trends in Russia's natural gas production in the years following the country's ruble devaluation and financial crisis. The account—based on systematic in-country observations, discussions/interviews with industry executives, and a review of industry sources—focuses on factors affecting domestic supply and demand as well as export capacity (will Russia have enough gas to meet rising domestic demand while fulfilling its export obligations?), regional patterns of production (and performance of Gazprom regional production enterprises), obstacles to the use of associated gas derived from crude oil extraction, and major pipeline construction projects in West Siberia and the Russian Far East. The paper concludes by outlining CERA's forecast for Russian gas production to 2020, also disaggregated by region. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: L71, O13, Q40, Q48. 7 figures, 8 tables, 51 references.     

THE POPULATION DYNAMICS OF EAST SIBERIA AND PROBLEMS OF PREDICTION

A review of population trends in the USSR and in East Siberia suggests that net in-migration will become a negligible source of labor over the next 25 years until the year 2000 because past labor surpluses no longer exist in the western regions of the Soviet Union and because living conditions in the eastern regions are inferior to conditions in the west. East Siberia will therefore have to depend increasingly on the regional rate of natural increase. The region's population is expected to grow from 8 million in 1970 to 10–12 million by the year 2000. The slow predicted growth of population is not expected to become a constraint on the region's economic development because of rising labor productivity and a regional emphasis on energy-intensive and raw-material-oriented industries rather than labor-intensive activities.     

THE BAYKAL-AMUR MAINLINE RAILROAD: ITS AREA OF INFLUENCE AND ITS PROJECTED FREIGHT FLOWS

The idea of building the Baykal-Amur Mainline, running through East Siberia to the north of, and parallel to, the Trans-Siberian Railroad, first arose in 1932. Initial surveys of an alignment were completed in 1944, and the western and eastern extremities of the BAM were completed by the early 1950s. Surveys along the BAM route resumed in 1967 with renewed interest in a railroad that would open up new Siberian resource sites for export through Pacific seaports. After completion of the BAM, scheduled for 1983, freight traffic will consist mainly of West Siberian crude oil moving to refineries and ports of the Soviet Far East (70 to 75 percent of freight movements in ton-kilometers) followed by timber (10 to 18 percent). Coking coal from southern Yakutia to the Pacific coast for export to Japan will also be significant freight item. Eastbound freight movements will greatly exceed westbound traffic. [A previous article on the BAM appeared in Soviet Geography, April 1975.]     

Siberia at the Last Glacial Maximum: Environment and Archaeology

This article focuses on the presence of humans in Siberia and the Russian Far East at the coldest time of the Late Pleistocene, called the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) and dated to c. 20,000–18,000 rcbp. Reconstruction of the LGM environment of Siberia, based on the latest models and compilations, provides a background for human existence in this region. Most of Siberia and the Russian Far East at c. 20,000–18,000 rcbp was covered by tundra and cool steppe, with some forest formations in the river valleys. Climate was much colder and drier than it is today. Eighteen Upper Paleolithic sites in Siberia are radiocarbon dated strictly to the LGM, and at least six of them, located in southern parts of western and eastern Siberia and the Russian Far East, have solid evidence of occupation during that time span. It seems clear that southern Siberia was populated by humans even at the height of the LGM, and that there was no dramatic decline or complete disappearance of humans in Siberia at that time. The degree of human adaptation to periglacial landscapes in the mid-Upper Paleolithic of northern Eurasia was quite high; humans coped with the cold and dry environmental conditions using microblade technology, artificial shelters, tailored clothes, and megafaunal bones as fuel. An erratum to this article can be found at     

THE BAYKAL-AMUR MAINLINE AND THE INTEGRATED ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF THE EASTERN REGIONS OF THE USSR

The construction of the BAM is viewed as serving two purposes: one, the development of new resource sites for export through Soviet Pacific ports, particularly to Japan; second, the accelerated development of new parts of East Siberia and the Far East, serving ultimately as a bridgehead for further advance toward the Northeast. Key resource areas to be given priority in development are the Neryungri coking-coal basin of South Yakutia, for export to Japan; the Udokan copper deposit, and the Molodezhnoye asbestos deposit. Because of the harsh environment, it is unlikely that any processing activities beyond mineral concentration and forest products industries will be located in the BAM zone, at least in the early stages of development. Food supply for the growing population will be largely dependent on hauls of bread and feed grains from southern portions of West Siberia and vegetables from as far away as Central Asia. Future territorial production complexes along the BAM are tentatively outlined.     

Modern Geography and its Tasks in Siberia and the Soviet Far East

The director of the Institute of Geography of Siberia and the Far East, founded in 1959 in Irkutsk, discusses his philosophy of modern geography, outlines the table of organization of his institute, and lists the principal research problems in the geography of Siberia and the Far East, with particular reference to the study of the tayga, or boreal forest.     

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN THE USSR: NEW INFORMATION ON DISTRIBUTION

Analysis of newly available data and recent newspaper reports on the corrective labor system reveals important distributional and spatial aspects to the problem of crime and its punishment in the USSR. The article supplies data on the major categories of offenses, notes the general similarity of crime rates between rural and urban areas and the significant interregional variations in overall and specific crime rates. Evidence is presented which indicates that the total crime rate in Siberia and the Far East greatly exceeds the USSR average. This is attributable to distinctive features of the region's population structure, the instability of its labor force, unsatisfactory living conditions, and the (relatively) still large number of inmates brought to corrective labor camps in Siberia from all over the country.     

ON THE QUESTION OF THE COMPOSITION OF ECONOMIC TERRITORIAL COMPLEXES

A variety of definitions of “territorial production complex” is analyzed in terms of the factors that enter into this concept of an integrated areal production unit of the Soviet economy. The author favors a definition that would encompass the interplay of all human activities within a given territory, from a major economic region to an individual place. The theory of cycles, developed by N. N. Kolosovskiy as an analytical tool for the study of regional economies, is criticized on the ground that it considers only the technological feasibility of combining a set of related industries into a so-called cycle, but ignores the issue of economic efficiency. The proposition is illustrated by comparing the location of a water-intensive and fuel-intensive chemical complex in Belorussia and Eastern Siberia. The technological basis for such a complex is present in both regions, but the economics favors an East Siberian location.     

Nationalism and Imperialism in Eastern Europe

CAROLE ROGEL. The Slovenes and Yugoslavism 1890–1914. Boulder: East European Quarterly, distributed by Columbia University Press, 1977,167 pp., East European Monographs, No. XXIV. ROBERT H. JOHNSTON. Tradition versus Revolution: Russia and the Balkans in 1917. Boulder: East European Quarterly, distributed by Columbia University Press, 1977, 240 pp., East European Monographs, No. XXVIII. ROBERT A. KANN, BÉLA K. KIRÁLY, PAULA s. FICHTNER, eds. The Habsburg Empire in World War i, Essays on the Intellectual, Military, Political and Economic Aspects of the Habsburg War Effort. Boulder: East European Quarterly, distributed by Columbia University Press, 1977, 247 pp., East European Monographs, No. XXIII. LESLIE CHARLES TIHANY. The Baranya Dispute 1918–1921: Diplomacy in the Vortex of Ideologies. Boulder: East European Quarterly, distributed by Columbia University Press, 1978, 138 pp., East European Monographs, No. XXXV.     

Siberia and neighboring regions in the Last Glacial Maximum: did people occupy northern Eurasia at that time?

An updated analysis of Paleolithic sites in Siberia and the Urals ¹⁴C-dated to the coldest phase of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), with its timespan currently determined as ca. 23,000–19,000 BP (ca. 27,300–22,900 cal BP), is presented. It is demonstrated that people continuously occupied the southern and central parts of Siberia and the Russian Far East (up to 58° N latitude), and perhaps sporadically settled regions located even further north, up to 70° N, throughout the LGM. This is in accord with our previous data, but is now based on a larger dataset, and also on a paleoecological analysis of the major pre-LGM archaeological sites in Siberia and the Urals north of 58° N. It is clear that Paleolithic people in northern Eurasia were able to cope with the treeless tundra environment well in advance of the LGM, at least at ca. 34,000–26,000 BP (ca. 38,500–30,000 cal BP). Therefore, a high degree of adaptation to cold conditions allowed people to survive in Siberia during the LGM.     

‘Eastern History with Western Eyes’: E.A. Freeman,Islam and Orientalism

E.A. Freeman is remembered today as a confident proponent of English superiority, whose historical writings were distorted by mid-Victorian prejudices in favour of the Aryan race. This perspective privileges some of Freeman's ideas and works above others, and obscures the complexities of his view of the past which only fully emerge through an examination of his two neglected works on the East: The History and Conquests of the Saracens (1856) and The Ottoman Power in Europe (1877). In analysing Freeman's obscure Oriental volumes this article uses the insights of Edward Said who argued that the West exploits the East according to contemporary exigency and consistently represents the Orient as ‘other’. It demonstrates that Freeman composed the Saracens and Ottoman Power in direct response to Britain's support of the Ottoman Empire during the Crimean War and Eastern Crisis, and re-arranged the past to represent the Turk as distinct from, and inferior to, the West. Freeman's account of the distinctiveness of the Orient, however, suggests the need to revise literature on Western approaches to the East which has assumed that antagonism towards Islam declined in the modern period, or was masked behind narratives that purported to be secular and objective but which continued to empower Europe and subjugate the Orient. Juxtaposing Freeman's narratives on Western and Eastern history, I argue that his association of Christianity with European progress and Islam with Eastern barbarism is key to understanding his deep fear of cultural contact with the Orient. Far from bolstering the strength and power of the West vis-à-vis the East, Freeman's account of the fearful barbarity of the Islamic Orient is underpinned by his belief in an anti-Christian, Judeo-Islamic, conspiracy that threatened the West with degeneration and recapitulation.     

The Nor’-Wester and the Saskatchewan Gold Rush

ABSTRACT

This article explores the phenomenon of how news about the discovery of gold on the North Saskatchewan River in British administrated Rupert's Land was propagated by the press in the early 1860s. It tracks the resonance of gold rush news first in the Nor’-Wester, a newspaper published in the Red River Settlement, and then reveals how this paper's coverage was re-published and transmitted across the Anglophone world. The article shows how news about the Saskatchewan gold rush was highly politicised. In the Red River Settlement, editors of the Nor’-Wester sought to spur on the British parliament to implement responsible government in the colony, issuing dire warnings about the potential repercussions of a mass migration to the region and the need to act precipitously. Likewise, in newspapers across North America, editors republished and endorsed news from the Nor’-Wester about the Saskatchewan gold fields to benefit their own communities. But while editors championed the Saskatchewan gold fields to lure potential gold rushers to the region, no large-scale migration to the Northwest occurred. While news about the Saskatchewan gold fields may have been popular across the Anglophone world, it was not actionable. While news reports conveyed the impression that a gold rush was ongoing on the North Saskatchewan River, the reality on the ground did not match the press coverage.     

Before Australia: Historicising Russian Migration via China after World War II

In 1945, tens of thousands of Russian and Russian-speaking Jewish refugees were in China. Many had come decades earlier, following the Bolshevik revolution, the rout of anti-Bolshevik armies in 1919–20 and the White Russian defeat in Siberia in 1922. At war’s end, they became part of the large cohort of European refugees in the Far East, displaced by National Socialism and then by Communism, who urgently sought resettlement in the West. A significant number eventually came to Australia in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Yet, Russian migration to Australia via the China route is poorly understood in the historiography. This article examines Russian migration to China in the first half of the twentieth century, and their departure from China in the late 1940s and 1950s. Their trajectory was complicated first by events in China, and second, by their encounters with the international refugee agencies created by the Allies to assist those displaced by the war.     

The semidiurnal tides at the midlatitude lower thermosphere over East Siberia

Results from the study of semidiurnal tides in the horizontal wind field at 85–95 km over East Siberia are presented. The seasonal variation of tidal amplitudes and the effects of stratospheric warmings are discussed.     

Neo-Colonialism Reconsidered: A Case Study of East Africa in the 1960s and 1970s

A former major base of British colonialism, East Africa, has served as one of the testing grounds for what has been referred to as neo-colonialism. According to Kwame Nkrumah, neo-colonialism indicates that although ‘in theory’, a colony attains independence, ‘[i]n reality its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside’ (Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism. London: Panaf Books, 2004 [1965]). This article challenges this image of neo-colonialism. Based on British documents of the late 1960s and early 1970s, most of which have become available to the public only in the last decade, and sources in East African libraries, it casts new light on British external relations with East Africa in the heady days of independence. These documents demonstrate that the new states of East Africa enjoyed a substantial degree of autonomy, that Britain's development aid was inconsistent and that Britain's involvement in the affairs of its former colonies was reluctant. These accounts reveal that the impact of British policy on newly independent states was actually limited, and thus the nature of Britain's relationship with its ex-colonies and the discourse of neo-colonialism are debatable.     

Politics and Public Policy

Abstract

Donnersmarck's The Lives of Others has been widely praised as the first German film to confront the horrors of the East German communist regime. But the film's politics may be ambiguous. As critical as it is of East Germany, it does not offer a ringing endorsement of West Germany. For example, the film's playwright-hero seems to have artistic problems in the West, just as he did in the East. The film's equivocal attitude toward communism is epitomized by its apparently positive view of the Marxist author Bertolt Brecht. This essay compares The Lives of Others with Brecht's play The Good Person of Szechwan in an effort to understand Donnersmarck's attitude toward his East German predecessor and what it means for his larger view of communism and its relation to art.     

Radiocarbon Chronology of the Siberian Paleolithic

We have compiled 462 C-14 determinations for 120 Paleolithic and Mesolithic sites from Siberia and the Russian Far East. The Mousterian sites are dated to ca. 46,000–28,500 BP. The Middle–Upper Paleolithic transition dates to ca. 43,300–28,500 BP. Although there are a few earlier sites, most of the Upper Paleolithic sites are dated to the time interval between ca. 34,000 BP and 10,000 BP. The earlier Upper Paleolithic stage is characterized by macroblade technology and is radiocarbon-dated to ca. 34,000–20,000 BP. The earliest microblade technology occurs in the late stage of the Upper Paleolithic, dated to ca. 23,000–20,000 BP, but the majority of microblade sites is dated to ca. 20,000–11,000 BP. The Final Paleolithic (Mesolithic) sites date to ca. 12,000–6000 BP. At ca. 13,000–11,000 BP, the earliest Neolithic appeared in both the Russian Far East (Amur River basin) and the Transbaikal. The Paleolithic–Neolithic transition occurred ca. 13,000–6000 BP.     

‘The meat market’: production and regulation of masculinities on the Grindr grid in Newcastle-upon-Tyne,UK

This article explores the regulatory practices that shape the production of embodied masculinities in profile pictures in the online dating app, Grindr. Mobile dating applications are becoming increasingly enmeshed in everyday socio-sexual lives, providing ‘new’ spaces for construction, embodiment and performance of gender and sexuality. I draw on 31 semi-structured interviews and four participant research diaries with men who use Grindr in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, a post-industrial city in North East England. Exploring the ways men display, expose and place their bodies in online profile pictures, revealed the production of two forms of masculinity – hypersexualised masculinity and lifestyle masculinity. I argue that the regulatory practices that shape men’s bodies in everyday spaces work to produce these masculinities. I take a visual approach that pays attention to the spatial practices that produce pictures, but that also pays attention to other senses, particularly touch. Paying attention to the visuality of the Grindr grid enables an understanding of the instability of online/offline dichotomies, as it is the interactions of online and offline spaces that enable the production of digital masculinities.